She showed him that she was worried. “Look here, are you holding out on me?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because when the police find Steele’s body, we’ve got our necks in a noose, yet all of a sudden you’re acting as though there was no particular hurry.”
“There isn’t,” he said.
“Sometimes I could slap you!”
“Here’s my cheek,” he said. Then, after a moment, “If that’s a slap, I’ll turn the other cheek.”
Della laughed lightly as she jumped from the car. “Don’t forget to wipe off that lipstick. ’Night!”
“ ’Night,” Mason said, and stood watching her as she ran swiftly up the steps of her apartment house.
Chapter 18
Mason was drifting into that warm lethargy which comes just before sleep when the telephone by the side of his bed rang with shrill insistence.